Identification of subspecies-divergent genetic loci responsible for mineral accumulation in rice grains

Zijian Huang; Sai Li; Zhaokun Lv; Yan Tian; Yibo Chen; Yuxing Zhu; Jiurong Wang; Huabing Deng; Liang Sun; Wenbang Tang

doi:10.3389/fgene.2023.1133600

Identification of subspecies-divergent genetic loci responsible for mineral accumulation in rice grains

Front Genet. 2023 Feb 7:14:1133600. doi: 10.3389/fgene.2023.1133600. eCollection 2023.

Authors

Zijian Huang¹, Sai Li², Zhaokun Lv², Yan Tian³, Yibo Chen², Yuxing Zhu², Jiurong Wang², Huabing Deng², Liang Sun², Wenbang Tang^{1

3}

Affiliations

¹ College of Agronomy, Hunan Agricultural University, Changsha, China.
² Key Laboratory of Agro-Ecological Processes in Subtropical Region, Institute of Subtropical Agriculture, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Changsha, China.
³ State Key Laboratory of Hybrid Rice, Hunan Hybrid Rice Research Center, Changsha, China.

Abstract

Rice (Oryza sativa L.) is a major staple food that provides not only dietary calories but also trace elements for the global inhabitants. The insufficiency of mineral nutrients and the potential accumulation of excessive toxic elements in grains pose risks to human health. The substantial natural variations in mineral accumulation in rice grains presents potentials for genetic improvements of rice via biofortifications of essential mineral nutrients and eliminations of toxic elements in grains. However, the genetic mechanisms underlying the natural variations in mineral accumulation have not been fully explored to date owing to unstable phenotypic variations, which are attributed to poor genetic performance and strong environmental effects. In this study, we first compared the genetic performance of different normalization approaches in determining the grain-Cd, grain-Mn, and grain-Zn variations in rice in different genetic populations. Then through quantitative trait loci (QTLs) identification in two rice inter-ectype populations, three QTLs, including qCd7, qMn3, and qZn7, were identified and the QTLs were found to exhibit allelic differentiation in the different ecotypes. Our results were expected to broaden our understanding for mineral accumulation in rice and propose the potential functional alleles that can be explored for further genetic improvement of rice.

Keywords: QTL; mineral accumulation; phenotypic normalization; rice; subspecies differentiation.

Grants and funding

The study was financially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. U19A2026, 31972490, 32172078, and U22A20502), Key Research and Development Plan of Jiangsu Province (Grant no. BE2020318-2), and the Hunan Science and Technology Innovation Program (Grant No. 2021JC0007).